Learning 
sleeve 


_ Pray 





& Eowin M.Poreat 


For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those 


who call them 
friend.” 


—Morte d’Arthur-Tennyson. 


SO Fete a A 2k A Nl AS 


Neen ce ee aa 
“More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy 
voice 
Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 





Learning How to Pray 


N Luke 11:1, when our Lord ceased pray- 
ing, the disciples said: “Lord, teach us to 
pray.’ Here are grown men and disciples of 
Jesus who did not yet know how to pray. In 
Acts 4: 31, we read, “And when ‘they had 
prayed, the place was shaken where they were 
gathered together, and they were all filled with 
the Holy Spirit and they spake the Word of 
God with boldness.” Which is to say, that 
these men had, in the interval between Luke 
11:1 and Acts 4:31, learned how to pray. 


Prayer is the Christian’s greatest resource, 
for it gives him the Whole God for his Total 
Need. ‘The best way to learn the secret of 
‘prayer is to study the personal experiences of 
the first men whom Jesus taught to pray. 


Undoubtedly these men had been saying 
prayers from their childhood and they had con- 
tinued until now. The Pharisee in the parable 
in Luke 18: 9f said a prayer, but he did not 
pray. “True prayer waits upon the establish- 
ment of the personal relationship. Samuel had 
said prayers before that night when God called 
him by name, but he did not yet know the 
Lord, and that night for the first time in his 
life he spoke directly to God. Carlylé has made 








LEARNING HOW TO PRAY 





the memorable comment on, “Oh, Universe, te 
accept Thee!” ‘Gad, you'd better!” A man 
once said to me, claiming to have reached 
higher ground, that his only prayer was: “Oh, 
Universe, I will what thou willest!”» This is 
stocism, not Christian prayer which is com- 
munion of persons. A student once asked 
Phillips Brooks if in his judgement personal 
communion with Jesus Christ was essential to 
Christianity. The great preacher replied, 
“Personal communion with Jesus Christ is 
Christianity.” 


Jesus sought to bring the disciples into this 
personal relationship and his first lesson was 
by example. He did not argue the existence of 
God or the possibility of prayer.. He prayed! ° 


And here, in the presence of Jesus praying, 
all objections to. prayer, whether scientific or 
philosophical or practical, fall to the ground. 


But in addition to his example he gave 
them specific instructions and the fullest of 
these is the Lord’s Prayer. . If now we draw 
out the suggestions he made here, they are as 
follows: 


(a) Be alone. For prayer 1s as solitary as 
dying, and only after long practice of secret 











LEARNING HOW TO PRAY 





prayer does public prayer, which is always dif- 
ficult, become possible. In Matthew 6: 5f, 
Jesus urges a certain calm deliberateness in 
seeking solitude; all the world shut out, and 
at last only two beings in the universe—your- 
self and God—shut in together in the august 
experience of immediate converse. 


(b) Fill the mind with the thought of God 
as Father and as Holy. This will beget rever- 
ence and trust. Is there a God? Yes he is 
your Father, and you may speak to him and 
trust him. 


(c) Come to see that he knows what is 
best for you and to prefer that above every- 
thing else. “Thy will be done.” Prayer 1s 
not making God will what we wish, but sub- 
mitting our wishes to his will. 


(d) ‘Then push out of the individual circle 

and embrace the world, ‘““Thy kingdom come 

| on earth’—and bleach your thought 

of the earth in the light of heaven—‘as in 
heaven.” 


(ce) Find the motive of prayer for per- 
sonal benefits—bread, forgiveness, fortitude, 
in the needs of the world. Hungry, guilty, 
timid people are never available for the work 


SY 
MES PA. SPS RC PI A ~ CTE DAIS ESE TORSO AB PES A iA RR IIE OE ETE 











LEARNING HOW TO PRAY 


of the kingdom; food, forgiveness, fortitude, 
ates for co-operation in the cone of the 
kingdom. 


(f) “Live up to your prayers in order 
that you may pray again.”* “For we also 
forgive’; “Be at peace with all men.” Our 
petitions are registered in heaven and held 
there as a pledge on our conduct among our 
fellows. You cut the nerve of prayer if you 
let your relations with people become tan- 
gled and strained. You may keep up the forms 
of prayer with unforgivingness in your heart, 
but the heavens are as brass above you. 


(g) In his last discourse to the twelve, re- 
corded in John 14-16, Jesus gave the dis- 
ciples a new lesson about praying. “They were 
to pray, “In his name.” ‘This did not mean 
attaching his name as a talisman to a prayer 
reeking with selfishness, as Alexander Mac- 
Laren has somewhere put it. No; he be im the 
name of Jesus is to be saturated with his senti- 
ments; to be controlled by his principles; to be 
at one with his will—in a word, to be within 
the circle of his being. As long as we stand 
outside of that circle there is no virtue in 
merely saying, ‘“And this I ask in Jesus’ name.” 









V*Z5T. Cody: 














LEARNING HOW TO PRAY 





It would be true to say, “And this I ask out 
of Jesus’ name.” 


‘(h) ~ Still another lesson he gave them in 
the period of the forty days between his resur- 
rection and ascension. ‘The most striking fea- 
ture of the intercourse of the risen Lord with 
his disciples: is his intermittent. appearances. 
What is the reason for this? He was under- 
taking to substitute his spiritual for his bodily 
presence, so that these men might grow accus- 
tomed to the thought of his being at hand 
when he could not be seen; and when at last 
he passed permanently out of their sight, they 
did not feel that they had lost him, but that 
they had him in his omnipresence, that wher- 
ever they might be and whatever their need, 
they might speak to him there beside them 
with all his grace and power. 


Here, then, are the specific suggestions which 
Jesus made to the men whom he was teaching 
to pray, and when we open the book of The 
Acts we find them undertaking the momentous 
enterprise which the commission (Matt. 28: 
18—20) had laid upon them with a great con- 
fidence. He was near! And even when per- 
secutions began, still they went forward in the 
-assurance of victory because they were aware 


ieee 
Os 











LEARNING HOW TO PRAY 


of the immediate help of their unseen Friend 
—their enthroned Lord. 


Here we have sketched in bare outline the 
experiences of the first men “with Christ in 
the School of Prayer,” and none of us need 
be discouraged. James and John were thund- 
erers according to our Lord’s own estimate of 
them; and the record shows that they had un- 
tempered mortar in them. “Shall we call 
down fire from heaven and consume them?” 
“Grant that we may sit one on thy right and 
the other on thy left hand in thy kingdom.” 
But the story unfolded in The Acts shows that 
these “sons of Thunder,” these selfish bigots 
had grown up out of selfishness into the king- 
dom passion, into the humility and patience 
of the saints, and so may we all, if only we 
take their earlier attitude and say, “Lord, teach 
us to pray.” 





THE GENERAL BOARD OF PROMOTION 
of the NORTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION 
200 Fifth Avenue New York City 





No. 214. Ed. 4. 50M. 1-20. 


